


Promised the Dark: a dark! John thriller

by Ghislainem70



Series: The Indestructibles [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Action/Adventure, BAMF!John, dark! John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:03:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghislainem70/pseuds/Ghislainem70
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <strong>Sherlock is dead. John wants revenge.  This is not a Reichenbach tale.  Moriarty is inexhaustibly inventive.</strong>
  <br/>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Promised the Dark.

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Dansk available: [ghislainem70: The Indestructibles – En bryllups special (dansk oversættelse) - 15. Juni 2012](https://archiveofourown.org/works/434451) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account)



 

 

 

John was in a room with no windows and no doors.

He knew this because he had been pacing the room for a long time, feeling carefully, seemingly a perfect cube. The ceiling was too high to reach, probably there was an opening up there somewhere from which he had been dropped, but there was no way to reach it and no amount of straining revealed even the hint of an outline. One small opening in the floor for toilet and drainage purposes and a smooth, deeply recessed metal button he could push and a trickle of water spurted from a tiny opening in the wall, barely big enough to put a finger in.

A featureless black box with slick, seamless walls. Cold that radiated through and absorbed his body heat. Ventilation, somehow, silent and almost undetectable.

* * *

There had to be a purpose to this confinement, what he could not imagine. He was not drugged. He had been provided some unidentifiable drinks and bland custards in soft pouches such as were given to children, no straw, that presumably were nourishing. These, too must be somehow dropped from the ceiling but he never heard anything, only felt them appear at his bare feet at regular intervals.

The first few pouches John had tried to tear into strips, hoping to begin a ligature to use as a weapon. But the pouches were engineered to tear only into small useless fragments and the effort was a failure.

If Moriarty wanted him dead, given his situation, he would be dead already. And right now, he almost wished he was. Almost. Because he could not imagine any reason Moriarty would need, or want, to use him for anything. Not now. Now that Sherlock was dead.

* * *

The single solitary reason John had any will at all to explore his surroundings, forcing his brain to think, think, was the burning for vengeance that had taken him over like a parasite, undeniable and utterly overpowering. When he had avenged Sherlock, then would be the time for mourning, an endless mourning that he could not, would not permit himself to imagine.

If there had been any light at all, John’s face would be seen set in a brutal, soulless mask with death in its eyes. All humanity, warmth, kindness, all of the tender qualities that made John John, had been stripped away. And he was glad.

Finally, in this moment, with Sherlock gone forever, John felt himself in some way closer to him than ever in life. For he was becoming like Sherlock, the Sherlock before John, the Sherlock who could go for months and even years at a time permitting himself no more emotion than a robot.

I’m a high functioning sociopath, John whispered, baring his teeth at the darkness.

* * *

He had been stripped of his clothes, of course. Nothing from which to make a rope, or anything resembling a weapon. But as John paced in the blackness, the image of Golem’s hands appeared. Just hands, lethal hands. He started doing pushups on his knuckles. Then his fingertips. He periodically slapped the wall, making his hands ache. He spent what felt like hours every day doing the most challenging calisthenics he could invent, as silently as possible, although he was certain that even in the darkness he was being watched.

He was pretty sure he was not being fed enough to maintain this for long. He hoped it would be long enough. He could feel his body changing, bulky muscles becoming iron cords, all fat melting away, becoming slender and hard. Like Sherlock.

He never let himself think of Sherlock, all visions of Sherlock’s death locked away in a strongbox deep inside. Instead, he ruminated on every word, every image from his brief encounters with Moriarty.

 _"No one ever gets to me,"_ Moriarty gloating, preening.

We’ll see about that, John promised the dark.

* * *

After the first few early hours in which John screamed like a madman at Moriarty, raging at him, begging him to come down and face him, John fell silent. He decided didn’t want to give anyone listening the satisfaction of hearing him talk to himself, and after his initial outburst, the few times he caught himself starting, he clamped down on his tongue.

John could endure the dark. The Taliban had vast cave networks. One of the things John had learned in Afghanistan was the art of spelunking. But the longest he had spent in a deep cave after he and his companion were temporarily lost, light sources exhausted, was 48 hours. For Sherlock, he could endure it for as long as it took.

There was only one way for John to affect his environment. The water spigot. When he pressed the button, the water flowed out onto the floor. When he stopped pressing the button, it stopped. There was a tiny, efficient drain, far too small to put an arm or leg in, let alone try to climb through. Whenever water pooled on the floor, it flowed down a slight slope and the drain had a sensor mechanism which swiftly and completely drained it away.

On what he thought was probably the second day, John formed a plan.

* * *

He continued shredding the drink pouches. He made a show of disposing of nearly all of the fragments down the drain. He hoped this activity looked to the watcher as either fastidiousness (he did his best to keep himself, and the cell, clean), or a little ritual to pass the time. If the watcher thought he would try to choke himself to death by swallowing the pouches, he imagined, then it was more likely than not that he would be expected to swallow them whole. The shredded bits looked even less of a risk than the useless pouches themselves.

The saved bits he scattered around the floor as though overlooked in the dark, and one set he blindly arranged as a makeshift chess set, spending several hours a day (as best he could tell) attempting to play  
against himself. This recalled memories Afghanistan and playing chess at night in an ill-lit tent with Barton, the other surgeon.

While pretending to play chess, John practiced holding his breath.

* * *

On what John thought was perhaps the twenty-seventh day, he swiftly gathered up the all of the scraps. He crammed them down the tiny drain, adding a little leftover dried custard to make a sort of paste, praying that it was enough to hold. He pressed the button, then crammed more scraps tightly into the recessed space. He leaned on them with his now toughened, hardened thumbs, compacting the mixture. Water spurted from the spigot, the drain clogged, and the scraps held.

Water started pooling at the soles of his feet.

He now stopped up the spigot, holding his finger firmly against the opening with his whole weight, feeling the pressure instantly building, pushing against his finger till it burned.

If anyone was watching, any one of several things was likely to happen. One, they would assume John was trying to drown himself, and they would either let him, or not.

* * *

Trying to stop John could take several forms but the best option, the one he was praying for, was that they would send someone down to him, or somehow pull him back up, through the hypothetical opening in the ceiling.

If it was deemed acceptable for him to drown, they would let the water fill the chamber. That was also a desirable outcome.

Or, they could send down poison gas, or a live electrical wire.

Or, they could repair the drain, or turn off the water supply altogether. Then John would have to wait for whatever Moriarty had planned next. Maybe no one was watching at all, Moriarty barely curious enough to check in at the end, to see to whether John had found an amusing way to die alone in his cell.

The pipe to the water spigot burst through the wall from the pressure of the blockages, and water gushed into the chamber with the force of a broken fire hydrant.

It took at least an hour for the water to reach his chest. He was starting to shiver. But nothing else happened; the water rose steadily, the drain held.

There was no sign that anyone intended to change the course of events.


	2. Treasure.

Hypothermia sets in between two to seven hours when water is between 15 and 21 degrees Celcius.

John was treading water and he knew he didn’t have much time left. His feet could no longer touch the floor. From the echoes above his head, though, it sounded like the water was approaching the ceiling. With a thrill, his fingertips finally touched it.  


He made a quick survey with his hands and felt a single recessed lightbulb, the tiny eye of a webcam that he swiftly ripped out, a square panel that did not move when he pushed up, and in the corner, a small rectangular metal grid from which slightly warm air issued. John pounded on the panel a few times, letting it get fainter each time. He cried for help and splashed about. In case there was another camera, he flailed at the ceiling, making a turn of the lightbulb every few minutes trying to appear as if was trying for a fingerhold. When it came free, he dropped it and it bobbed away.

John took a few deep breaths, exhaled, inhaled deeply and dove, kicking until he reached the spigot, where he held on with one hand. He relaxed his muscles, and went as limp as possible while still gripping the spigot. From his military training he had been taught that in holding one’s breath underwater, one is supposed to think of happy, relaxing thoughts to distract from the urge to gasp for breath and the burning sensation of the lungs.

 

Now John permitted himself to unlock his treasure, at last bringing forth memories of Sherlock in his arms, murmuring his name, of burying his fingers in Sherlock's hair. The joy of dashing through the streets of London, and the miracle of kissing him for the first time. Minutes passed.

John looked up and saw a square of dim light and the blurred outline of a head peering down. Even that faint light nearly blinded his long-deprived eyes. Hopefully all they would see was his body floating near the bottom and assume he was dead. With the lightbulb gone they wouldn't be able to see much – until they presumably went for more light.

Another minute passed. John and Sherlock, holding one another on a snowy winter’s day. The burning in his chest passed. He had been practicing. He could do this.

The square of light above was extinguished and all was again black. John floated to the surface quietly, taking care not to gasp his first breath. He felt back to the air vent. The water had risen to almost the ceiling. He pushed on up the grille, and it folded open without resistance. A faint light issued from the air duct above, permitting him to see the light bulb bobbing by. He grabbed it and broke it off against the grille, and gripped the screw end between his teeth. He gripped the metal lip of the duct, and pulled himself straight up from the water into the duct, his muscles straining to the limit.

In spelunking, some made a sport of wriggling through impossibly tight spaces, with radical twists, or for long distances. The longest run he had ever encountered in the Afghan caves was a corkscrew of about twelve feet. The air duct was almost impossibly tight and confining and he could not see where it ended.

He was wet, and had lost so much weight as to be nothing but taut muscle and bone. He braced himself against the vertical wall of the duct with his feet and hands, shimmying, clinging to a small riveted seam running around the duct. He willed himself not to let claustrophobia overtake him. The warm air was drying him and he tried to focus on this pleasant feeling after so long in the cold but the duct compressed him like a coffin.

He pushed upward, inch by inch, using the riveted seam to help him along. Now he was becoming drenched with sweat and his muscles, taxed to the limit, began vibrating with exhaustion. The broken lightbulb rattled between his teeth.

A bright square of light ahead on the side of the duct appeared, and there was a short horizontal turning, upon which he gratefully leaned his shoulders and chest, bracing himself with his feet. There was a grille opening here. He squinted through his eyelashes. The light burned his eyes. He waited. Eventually he was able to focus. A plain white room. There was a desk, a computer screen, a few plastic chairs. And almost directly below John, an opening in the floor through which he saw water, now receding.

Two men were here. One, a huge tattooed hulk, kneeling over the opening, shining a flashlight below. The other, slim, rather short in stature, dark-haired. This man was screaming abuse at the hulk, hurting John’s ears after so long in silence, but his heart sang at the sound.

Moriarty.

John punched through the grille, leaped onto the back of the hulk and instantly drove the broken lightbulb into his neck, severing the carotid artery. The man reared up and clawed for his gun, which John easily grabbed and tossed in the water. The man struggled briefly, arterial blood spewing over John who pushed him aside as he sank, then springing in front of Moriarty as he tried to maneuver around John to reach a door at the far end of the room.

"Isn't this a turn up, Moriarty," John said, dripping with gore.


	3. The Start of the Pain.

Moriarty was incapacitated. John had clocked him in the temple with the hulk's flashlight. His proclaimed creed of leaving wetwork to others was revealed by sadly lacking reflexes. A brief crunch and John felt the vulerable spot give way. Moriarty was sprawled on the floor, still conscious and in possession of his not inconsiderable venomous wits. John jerked up violently on the fingers of first one hand, then the other, crunching the bones, and retreived cell phone, pager, a set of keys and a few mysterious electronic baubles from Moriarty's pockets and set them aside.

"Do you know the most painful way to die?" Asked John quietly.

Moriarty's eyes glittered with unnatural glee. He nodded. "Actually, there are quite a lot," he said helpfully. "Usually far too much trouble, really. There are far easier ways to get all of the things you want without getting your hands dirty. I could show you."

John's bloody face was a rictus of ferocity. "You. Don't. Call. Murdering. Sherlock Holmes. In cold blood. Getting your hands dirty?"

Moriarty put on an over the top pantomime of pondering this question, screwing up his face. "Um, neooooooo," he drawled. "I really, truly don't. My hands are clean as the driven snow."

John locked eyes with Moriarty. Black eyes that were bottomless, soulless, cold, and utterly depraved. John knew Moriarty now saw the same reflected back. Twin black holes, offspring of a supernova. John and Moriarty, the ones left behind.

Without warning John bunched iron fingers tightly together and slammed them with every ounce of his poisonous fury to Moriarty's abdomen, just below the sternum. When he made contact, he didn’t stop, but kept driving into the flesh as though to reach Moriarty’s spine on the other side. Felt muscle and tissue separate, and give way, and still drilled in.

Moriarty's silent scream, all wind knocked out of him.

"This is nothing," said John quietly. "This is just the start. Of the pain."

He kept digging, twisting.

"I saw a lot of abdominal wounds in Afghanistan. You would not believe what a bomb can do to the human abdominal organs."

Here John silently considered Sherlock and gave a particularly vicious twist.

Moriarty was no longer, strictly speaking, fully conscious.

"Almost the worst of the worst, is a full rupture to the pancreas. Also the most painful cancer death. Morphine can't stop it, in the end."

Moriarty making slow motions as though trying to swim.

"I’ve just ruptured your pancreas. Spleen too, and probably some of your intestine. Infection will set in within hours. You will get a fever.

"And without emergency surgery, you'll die.

"It will take a while, maybe as long as two weeks. During that time you will be in the most excruciating pain a human can experience." Almost the most excruciating pain, John said to himself. Almost.

"There is a way to stop this pain." He slapped Moriarty's face to make sure he was paying attention.

"There is a bundle of nerves, just here," John said thoughtfully as he dug his fingers a bit to the side," the celiac bundle. If properly manipulated it interrupts the pain signals from your abdomen to your brain. Of course, the reverse is also true.

"The aorta is also right here. If I push hard enough, here, it will rupture and you’ll die quickly. I will be very careful, Moriarty, not to do this."

They sat together almost companionably for a while. John stopped pressing. Moriarty was in another place now. He dimly understood, but true understanding would take days, maybe weeks.

John felt nothing. He was an empty shell. He had hoped it would be enough, to hurt Moriarty, make him feel, feel pain and fear, as he had inflicted on others, inflicted on John. That it would be enough to take Moriarty's his life as he had taken Sherlock’s. Now he understood with a bottomless sorrow that nothing ever could.

Moriarty lifted his cockeyed finger. He was trying to raise his hand but could not. His eyes were trying to signal something. John ignored him, lost in memory. There was nothing Moriarty could say or do. Not now. John had resolved to resist all pleas for mercy.

Moriarty’s limited gestures became more frantic but weaker until with a flop he somehow pulled his shirt down a bit, revealing the top of his collarbone.

A slim silver ball chain was around Moriarty's neck and for the first time John saw the unmistakable outline of dog tags. He hooked a finger and drew the tags out from under Moriarty’s shirt, now drenched with cold sweat.

The tags said, "Captain John Watson M.D." A peculiar cold sensation filled John's chest.

"I didn’t." Moriarty whispered.

The last place John had seen his tags was hanging round Sherlock’s neck, just before he walked into the firebomb that took his life. John knew he was wearing them because Sherlock never took them off. And because John had kissed his neck that last morning just before walking into Moriarty's trap.

"NoNoNo . . ." Moriarty whispering. Moriarty was trying frantically to communicate. His unrecognizable voice croaked, "Take . . . "

John yanked the tags from Moriarty's neck causing fresh agony as Moriarty’s torso twisted.

From the tags, which were pristine and still encircled by the little black rubber silencers, hung something new.

A long silver key.


	4. Fail Deadly.

"Fail. Fail. . .Fail." stuttered Moriarty.

John shook the dog tags and key in front of Moriarty's eyes, which were dimming.

"Where. Did. You. Get. This?" John demanded. It had to be a cruel trick, a private joke of Moriarty's. He needed things simple and clear. But Moriarty wasn't paying attention anymore.

John repeated the question, this time with some pressure from his finger. Moriarty's eyes snapped wide and he started screaming.

"Sherlock...." Moriarty slurred.

"DON’T DARE SPEAK HIS NAME!" John roared. "Sherlock never gave these to you. Never." The very idea boiled John's blood.

Moriarty panted. "Fail---. Deh... Dead. Dead-ly."

John waited to see if he would say more. "Fail deadly? Is that it?" Silence.

John started dragging Moriarty towards the opening in the floor that led to his former cell, now only about half full of water. Moriarty shrieked. John forcibly turned his head so he could see down below.

"I will throw you down there, right now, I swear it. What is this key? Why are you wearing my tags?"

Moriarty’s head rolled. With supreme effort, he panted, "Key. Twelve. Hours. . . Sher..."

A red haze overcame John and he gave Moriarty another shove and now Moriarty's legs were dangling precariously above the open cell. "What about Sherlock?"

"He. . . " Moriarty grinned, a tremor really. "Dies."

* * *

"OHMYGODOHMYGOD!!" John shouted, leaping to his feet, poleaxed with shock and terror. Sherlock. Alive.

Every hair on his body stood on end. Moriarty had Sherlock in some kind of trap. The silver key the only clue.

John reeled with vertigo.

He sat down beside Moriarty, tears running down his face, unheeded, trickling through sticky blood. "Tell me where he is and I will let you live. It’s not too late."

". . . .too late," Moriarty mouthed silently.

For the merest flicker of an instant pure malice slithered in the fathomless depths of Moriarty’s black eyes before they rolled up in his head.

* * *

John removed the bloody clothes and biker boots (gratified to find a knife hidden there) from the dead guard, and put them on. He ripped the door open, finding it led to a nondescript hallway leading to a reinforced steel door, which in turn led to an empty warehouse. There was no one else in the building, no hidden rooms. If Sherlock was really alive, he was not being held here. John pushed back despair. Sherlock could be literally anywhere.

John grabbed Moriarty’s cell and frantically called Mycroft and Lestrade, who were astounded, euphoric John was alive. He cut off all questions and related Moriarty’s cryptic words.

Mycroft was paused for a long minute. "‘Fail deadly.’ It is a nuclear term. It is the opposite of ‘fail-safe.’ It is a protocol, whereby if a certain action is not taken at the expected time, overwhelming destructive force that cannot be recalled is launched upon the opponent."

"So if this silver key is not turned every twelve hours -- Sherlock dies?"

Mycroft didn’t answer.

* * *

Within an hour Mycroft and Lestrade were with John. They brought him clothes, food and water, which John devoured carefully after his long fasting. He needed to be stronger than ever now. For Sherlock’s sake.

John, Mycroft and Lestrade gathered in a grim semi-circle, looming over Moriarty's twitching body. John met Lestrade's anguished eyes. They said more clearly than any words that John was not alone in his suffering. As one, they surged toward Moriarty, only to be stopped by Mycroft's surprisingly firm grip.

"John, you have lacked – subtlety – here," he said gently. "But none was possible. I can see that. Still, I believe now is the time for you to leave him to me, don't you see?" John realized Mycroft was actually asking his permission. John exchanged a burning look with Lestrade, and they strained against the desire to snuff Moriarty out.

Mycroft summoned a pair of gentlemen swaddled in paper crime scene suits, who efficiently bore Moriarty away. An anonymous man wielding an enormous hypodermic followed closely behind, nodding silently to Mycroft as he passed.

"We will know more very soon," Mycroft pronounced as Moriarty was bundled into the back of an unmarked van.

* * *

John paced ferociously, as though still in his cell, grinding the silver key so tightly it scored an imprint into palm of his hand, as he imagined what might be happening to Sherlock in this very moment. His heart was going to burst or break.

Mycroft suddenly exclaimed, "Ah!" and sat back in the chair, frowning at Moriarty’s phone over the shoulders of his techs, who had instantly established a command center. He would not look at John.

"We’ve unlocked Moriarty's alarm. It is quite simple. He has several, but only one set strictly for every twelve hours."

"My God, Mycroft, how long?" John groaned.

"Five hours until the next alarm.

"At that moment, if the key is not turned in the correct lock, fail deadly will activate."

 


	5. The Next Level.

The unmaked van bearing the ravaged Moriarty drove away through the blighted council estate. A large semi truck rumbled past in the opposite direction. There was a lone figure splayed flat on its roof. The figure shot a bolt attached to a steel cable from a crossbow mounted to the roof of the trailer. The bolt pierced the rear doors of the van, and the cable ripped them off.

A fast black SUV rounded the corner and pulled behind the van, which was now weaving defensively. A figure emerged through the SUV sunroof, crawled over the hood and leaped into the rear deck of the open van.

Tendrils of noxious gas issued from the cab of the van and it slowed, then came to a rolling stop against a graffiti'd wall. Two more figures emerged to recover Moriarty's unconscious body from the van, and the SUV sped away.

* * *

Two hours had passed and Mycroft's team was unable to find any solid clues to Sherlock's location amongst Moriarty's devices. It was most probable that Sherlock was being kept at a safe house used by Moriarty, but where?

A faint trail from the video feed from John's captivity in the cell seemed most promising, and that was their urgent focus.

John shuddered as he realized that while he had been tricked into believing Sherlock dead, the watchers in his cell had been not just Moriarty, but Sherlock, too. He obsessively played back signs or signals he could have given if only he had known his love was alive.

Moriarty's cell phone rang.

* * *

John tried to seize the phone, but Mycroft held him back and put it on speaker. A muffled female voice with an Eastern European accent (Czech?) said:

"I have my husband back now. You should have been more careful. For what you have done to him, you will pay. For every injury inflicted upon my husband, I shall visit one hundred-fold upon you, Mycroft Holmes. And you, Detective Inspector Lestrade. And of course, especially you, Doctor Watson.

"Before, was just a little game. Time to take it to the next level."

"Where is Sherlock" John shouted as the line went momentarily quiet, only faint breathing to be heard.

"You will never, ever find him on your own. Your key is useless to you. Soon it will be too late, anyway. If you ever want to know where Sherlock is, there is only one way."

"I'm sure we can come to an arrangement," said Mycroft phlegmatically. "These games do not get you what you are really after, I know it and you know it. Come now. This affair has become tiresome. You've made your point. Name your price. I imagine you are acquainted with my bona fides. If a thing can be done, I will do it --- if you release Sherlock."

"I will not bargain with you, Mycroft Holmes. I have a precondition to any possible future dialogue. . . But, I make no promises. The condition is nonnegotiable and must be performed immediately."

John was nodding urgently, signaling Mycroft to agree. There was a pause as Mycroft frowned, considering. "I suppose we'd better hear it. What is this is -- condition." Mycroft spat the words as though they had a foul taste.

"Everything as it was before."

"I'm afraid you'll need to be plain. What is your condition?"

"Return Doctor Watson to us. He needs to be taught some . . . manners."

Lestrade and Moriarty stared at John with horror, but John's entire being was now reduced to the ticking clock on the wall. Less than three hours until fail deadly.

"Yes," John said with steely determination.

* * *

The word had barely issued from John's lips when Mycroft's team quickly administered an injection containing a tiny glowing bead into the skin of John's lean hip.

There was pounding on the reinforced steel door. Lestrade's radio crackled and he murmured to let just one man through. Lestrade opened the door slowly, his gun cocked. A sharply dressed man who looked like a Moriarty wannabe was there, heavily armed with a submachine gun. He gestured for John to follow him back out the door. "Now."

John stepped forward.

Lestrade was shaking like a leaf in the grip of powerful emotion. John had the briefest moment of revelation, but the steel door was already slamming behind him. John heard Lestrade hurl his strong shoulders against the closed door with strangled cry, "John, no!!!"

* * *

John was dragged along a few feet, then pushed stumbling out the warehouse door and up a fire escape, the huge gun viciously prodding the small of his back.

John glimpsed a flash of grey sky and the whirring blades of a helicopter before a black hood was thrown over his head, and then John was flying.

 


	6. Last Word.

The helicopter landed. They removed John's hood as they approached a crumbling Georgian stone manor, walled and gated, its grounds overgrown and neglected. A mossy stone fountain with a mournful stone angel trickled water into a basin clogged with slime. John could hear the sea pounding.

He had been shackled feet to hands. The armed man from the warehouse led him from an attached chain. And a woman was there too, striding alongside, tall and exotic, with long black hair that whipped in the wind. Her face was mostly concealed behind huge Bulgari sunglasses but what John could see was inscrutable, possibly cruel. This was Moriarty’s wife.

They entered the manor, which was almost devoid of furnishings. What John could see was all exceedingly dusty, faded and decayed. The only source of light here was greyed sunlight that filtered through numerous french windows. They traveled downstairs, footsteps echoing. Below was dark and damp. Here there were some improvised portable lights such as one would use at a crime scene.

They came at last to a heavy white metal door, obviously newly installed, at the bottom of a short stone stair, bearing a fluorescent sign that said: _Warning: Biologic Hazard/Poison. Do Not Enter Without Airlock Process._ It looked like something one would find in a nuclear submarine. The guard held John back, yanking his restraints by the chain. There was a silver keyhole in the door.

Mrs. Moriarty held up little silver key, toying with it, then finally turned it in the lock. There was a click, and little LED light there switched from blinking red to green. Then she pushed a larger button on the wall, and John heard a huge whooshing of air, and there were flashing lights until the airlock cleared.

Mrs. Moriarty pushed open the door with feline smile. "After you, my dear Doctor."

John charged into the room, clumsy with his restraints. It was a huge old Victorian-era kitchen that had been fitted up as a laboratory. He called out "Sherlock," his voice echoing against the stone walls, but the laboratory was eerily quiet.

John realized that it was all just another cruel joke. That all Moriarty and his wicked wife would ever have to do to inflict the cruelest torture imaginable would be to repeat this scenario, over and over, without end. John’s iron nerves, finally stretched beyond their limit, quivered and then snapped. He slowly sank to his knees, shuddering and sobbing.

Whereupon he finally saw Sherlock stretched out upon the stone floor, his limbs unnaturally contorted, and very, very dead.

He thought he could hear Moriarty’s wife laughing behind him but the sound faded somehow.

"Ooops!! I think we missed fail deadly by a few minutes! My dear husband is very strict about his protocols," she said, but a loud roaring in John’s ears almost drowned her voice out.

Then his brain snapped back to itself.

"Please. I don’t care what you do to me now. Let me try to do something for Sherlock," he begged. "I will do anything you ask, you can do anything with me, anything at all. Let me try to help him. He might not . . . I may be able to bring him back, if you let me work on him now."

Moriarty’s wife clapped her hands, delighted. "Anything? My dear Doctor, I am sure you don’t quite know what you are saying. But please, make sure for yourself. I assure you Sherlock is quite dead.

"The fail deadly protocol deploys a poisonous gas of Moriarty’s own invention. That is the reason for the airlock. The amount of gas is minuscule. One is dead before the first breath is completely inhaled. There is no antidote or treatment."

She beamed proudly, as though Moriarty were a sort of child prodigy, her child rather than her husband.

But she gestured to the guard to unlock John’s hand restraints, holding her own gun on him.

John flung himself on Sherlock, checking his vital signs. There were none. No pulse, pupils fixed and dilated, his color cyanotic. He was very cold but his skin and limbs were still soft and flexible. Sherlock’s entire frame was sunken in upon itself. It was obvious that Sherlock had not eaten anything for a long time. Tearing open Sherlock’s shirt to reveal his chest, he saw with tears in his eyes that Sherlock was covered with bruises.

John began mouth to mouth and heart massage, and did not stop until after what seemed like hours. Finally his own strength gave way.

He leaned over and brushed the dark hair from Sherlock’s clouded eyes. He kissed his cold cheek and bent to whisper in his ear.

"I’m sorry, Sherlock. I did try. I never was as clever as you. If I were, I would have saved you. Wait for me, love. I will be with you soon."

The guard was prodding John now, urging him up as John tried to hold Sherlock’s cold hand. A tiny rolled fragment of paper fell from between Sherlock’s fingertips. John palmed it and flung himself over Sherlock, crying out dramatically, and sweeping Sherlock up into his arms.

"What a touching scene," Mrs. Moriarty mocked.

Behind Sherlock’s lolling head, John was able to quickly work the scrap of paper open. It had a tiny, almost unreadable word, scrawled upon it.

 _Corsica._

Now John was being dragged up and he palmed the paper in his pocket just as the guard refastened his manacles.

"You see, Doctor, I keep my promises. One hundred-fold."

 


	7. Napoleonic Code.

It was now very late, around midnight in the silent manor that was Moriarty's safe house. John could glimpse the outline of a full moon through french windows with scraps of tattered sheer curtains. He had been taken to this upper floor, where after being forced to eat (two swallows of soup) and bathe he had been stapped to a hard wooden chair in this bedroom. There was a huge carved four-poster bed here covered with fresh white linens.  


John fell into a troubled unconsciousness in which he saw a kind of magic lantern show, revealing glowing memories of Sherlock, clever brilliant Sherlock, intense on the hunt, or passionate Sherlock, dragging John onto the couch for greedy, delirious lovemaking, as well as evil memories of his prison cell, seeing Sherlock walk into a firebomb, then Sherlock's battered blue-tinged body down below.

* * *

He smelled a complex fragrance that was something like a forest. He felt Moriarty's wife's long black hair brush his cheek. She put a candle on a nearby table. She was wearing a robe of emerald green that matched her green eyes.

"We can only go forward, never back, John," she said. "Do you understand. We must always be leaving the past behind us. The past is a prison, we can be slaves to the past unless we understand one true thing."

John looked at the floor. She grabbed his chin and yanked his face up. "Look at me when I am speaking. That true thing is that there is only now. Most people are thinking of yesterday, or worrying about tomorrow. Only in this moment, the present, are we truly free."

John rattled his restraints.

She laughed, a clear joyous peal. "You are very stong, John. Humor! You see, that means you are in the now. Stay there with me."

Her mood shifted abruptly. "But it can be painful too, the present. You gave Moriarty a great deal of pain. I won't forgive that."

John spat in her face, and she slapped him, blood trickling.

"I told Mycroft that you need to learn some manners. And we have all the time in the world," she said. "I want to know you better."

"Well let's get on with it then," growled John, straining against the staps. "No time like the present. As you say."

Moriarty's wife was stoking his corded muscles with sharp fingernails, making his skin shiver in disgust. He refused to permit himself any sensation and dove below the black waters of his mind. Back to the cell, alone, dark, and silent. He floated there.

* * *

He heard Sherlock's voice whisper in his head. _"Corsica. John. Corsica."_

His mind idly turned the word over and around. Moriarty's wife was hurting him now, twisting and slapping and giving little howls of frustration that he was so unresponsive.

Sherlock, what does it mean? What is in Corsica. Why Corsica? Corsica... Then John bit back a sob.

The last morning he saw Sherlock alive, John had been moaning about the London winter, staring down into a gloomy Baker Street. "Just to see the sun, now that would be lovely, just the thing. It's one of the things I actually miss about Afghanistan, the sun, the heat."

Sherlock looked down at John, eyebrow cocked. "I don't think Afghanistan is quite ready for tourism, and if it was, I don't think you should go there," Sherlock said seriously.

John laughed. "Sherlock, look, that's not what I meant, okay, I just . . .miss the sun. Wouldn't it be heaven, to I don't know, get away ---a Mediterranean island, just you and I? Leave the crime fighting to Lestrade for a month and soak up the sun? People do, you know," John explained patiently. Vacations were, he knew, one of those areas that Sherlock deleted.

"Do they?" Sherlock asked, brushing his magnificent lips across John's own eager lips, and John stopped talking about the sun.

Now John understod the note, _Corsica._ Sherlock knew John would come for him. Sherlock was telling John that in his final moments, he had been dreaming of John, John and Sherlock together on that Mediterranean island they would never see. John prayed it had brought him peace at the end. He let his mind go there, too.

 

* * *

But a stubborn part of his mind would not focus on the island. He was sitting in a classroom in Royal Army College, listening to a brilliant lecture about great military strategists of history.

Alexander the Great.

Julius Caeser.

Napoleon.

Napoleon? Napoleon Bonaparte. . .

Who was from _Corsica_ by birth.

Was this, instead, what Sherlock was trying to tell him? Napoleon, what -- some great military strategy? Or Napoleon, dethroned, exiled on Elba. What was Sherlock trying to tell him?

Moriarty's wife was losing her temper. "I can see I am going to have to make this more interesting for you, Doctor Watson."

A white hot flash of insight exploded in John's brain. This is what it must be like to be Sherlock, he thought, brain working at the speed of light, ideas crystalizing, puzzles falling into place, riddles solved.

The Napoleon Cub in London was a private club for Carribean expats.

* * *

In their last case together, Sherlock and John had foiled the Haitian ambassador's son, who was doping girls at the Napoleon Club with a kind of voodoo folk medicine called "zombie powder." Sherlock told John that the medicine fed to the girls in the case was not, in fact, real zombie powder. Sherlock had taken it himself with no lasting aftereffects.

Real zombie powder, Sherlock explained, was reputed to produce a deep trance, with every physical sign of death. The victims were then buried, seemingly dead, but in fact alive in a suspended state between life and death. And they rose from the grave days later -- in response to an unknow trigger -- like a sleepwalker, subject to their voodoo master's bidding.

But Sherlock emphasized that despite the efforts of multinational drug companies, no one had ever actually reproduced the real zombie powder, or the zombie effect, and the legends regarding it, and zombies, were dismissed as unproven.

Until now. Sherlock had done what no one else could do.

Sherlock had reproduced the zombie effect.

He had taken zombie powder, John did not know how, before the fail deadly was triggered.

Shelock was already in the death trance when Moriarty's poison gas was released.

He had not inhaled the gas at all.

And he would rise from the trance--- alive.

* * *

 


	8. Corsica.

She was drawing the tip of a knife down his belly very slowly, drawing more blood. John snapped to attention.

"Really, luv, you are taking your time getting to the best bit, aren't you," he said as the knife came dangerously close to his naked cock.

With superhuman effort mingled with the dawning joy of hope, John let erotic visions of Sherlock flow over him, and he started to harden. This is what Moriarty's wife wanted. What she needed.

She threw off her robe, and climbed on his lap, where he did his best to press against her hungrily. She had hot, moist skin and small hard breasts that rubbed slickly against his bloodied chest. John ignored the sensations of her silky thighs, and instead imagined Sherlock, cool and languid, head between John's legs, sheer ecstasy. He briefly wondered whether Moriarty ever bothered to satisfy her, or whether they just played with chemistry sets and knives.

John began thrusting against her as hard as he could with the straps holding him back. Mrs Moriarty was straddling him, teasing him a little by holding herself just at the tip of his cock and pulling back on his hair. He glared at her and kicked at the restaints.

"Leave the hands, you bitch, but untie my feet. I want to be able to pound you properly."

Her cruel green eyes gleaming, she leaned over to slowly untie one of his feet. "Remember the knife," she warned, "no tricks, and mind your manners."

She untied John's other foot, and he braced himself against the floor, lifted his hips from the chair, and drove into her.

Now she wrapped herself around him, riding his cock, her long hair covering John's face. He felt her hot breath panting against his neck and he prayed she would not try to kiss him there. She linked her arms under his, around his back, with the knife resting there in one hand, shaking with the rhythm. He kept pistoning like a machine, furious, until she finally started to come in a violent wave, cursing him. Then she slumped for a just a moment against his chest with her fingers locked painfully in his hair.

John surged halfway to his feet, the chair tethered now only to his hands. In two lightning fast leaps, legs apart, he dragged himself, the chair, and Moriarty's wife still entangled in his lap while she tried to wield the knife, and he launched head first through the french windows, fragile 300 year old wood and glass shattering, over the tiny juliet balcony, and they were flying again, flying through the cold sea air and he could hear the ocean closer now, below him, in fact, which was a little surprising.

Then everything went black.

* * *

John opened his eyes but they would not focus properly. Salt water streamed from his nose and mouth and he sputtered and coughed. He remembered where he was. Moriarty's safe house.

It was still dark but the bright moonlight illuminated the waves, silvering them. He thought he could see the outline of the manor house on the cliff above. Waves lapped against him and there were sharp rocks digging into his back and shoulders.

He tried to scramble to his feet but something was wrong with his left leg. A stab of grinding pain. His femur was broken. Nearby, Moriarty's wife lay sprawled in the sand, waves washing over her. She was not moving and her body rolled slightly with the waves. The arms of the wooden chair were still strapped to his wrists but the rest of the chair floated in broken pieces in the surf.

* * *

John was able to drag himself partially upright and was improvising a splint from the pieces of the broken chair when Lestrade appeared and took the pieces and finished the job, then carefully swept John up in his arms and carried him to where Mycroft was waiting with help.

John said, "Lestrade, listen to me. Sherlock's not dead. You have to believe me. He has taken a powerful drug, the zombie powder. He left me a note, he wants us to find the antidote. Someone has to go to 221B and find Sherlock's notes now, right now. He is the only one who knows what to do."

Lestrade calmed John, promising they would do as John asked. John fell back in a swoon and Lestrade saw that he had a huge gash on his forehead as well.

Lestrade gently kissed John's hair and went to save Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

Time passed. Dim hospital noises. Sherlock's voice speaking quietly.

* * *

He was aware of leaving the hospital, vaguely. He was aware of traveling a long distance, and of the disorienting sensations of heat and bright sunshine. These things he knew only from a vast remove, as though looking down from the heavens.

Sherlock's presence was constant, supporting and pulling him through.

He floated in and out of a delirium in which he was trapped in a gloomy seaside estate, where a woman's voice, soft and cruel, haunted him.

* * *

When at last John's mind released him from pain and fear, he woke fully to himself. And found that he was in a soft white bed looking out through open french doors into an azure sky. There were brilliant bougainvilla tumbling over a balcony, and the scent of orange blossoms in the air. There was a sound of waves crashing.

His leg was in a cast and there was a huge dressing on his forehead. But he felt no pain.

Sherlock was by his side, like a dream, the happiest of dreams. Sherlock, looking whole, healthy, radiant, with his soft hair in his eyes. John reached for him and stroked his warm cheek with wonder, and Sherlock smiled at him.

"What is this place?" John asked, dazzled.

"It is Corsica, John. We have the sun."

 

THE END.

The adventures continue in "Full Fathom Five; or, The Torment." 


End file.
